here was a time when I couldn’t even play a game without a piece of graph paper by my side. In classic dungeon crawlers and text adventures, knowing your precise location often meant the difference between life and death. Despite the advent of auto-mapping technology, Etrian Odyssey attempts to go back to these ancient conventions – but it loses the nostalgic charm along the way.

Using the touch screen to draw and notate your own map is a fun and natural fit for the DS, but the game built around this function is clunky and unforgiving. Making players do boring fetch quests in areas they’ve already explored isn’t a good way to keep them hooked. Don’t count on the story to keep you going, either; since you create all of your characters, and they are totally interchangeable and anonymous. I had to give my party members names like “Fight” and “Heal” just so I could recognize who should do what in battle.

If you have fond memories of the hardcore dungeon-crawlers from long ago, this title recreates that experience well. I have nothing against games that hearken back to old-school sensibilities, but Etrian Odyssey just feels like an outdated game that snuck onto a modern console.